Reasons Not To Freelance

Freedom means “Being you without anyone’s permission” i.e why freelancing and freedom go hand in hand. We may say that freelancing and freedom are complementary synonyms to each other in the world of IT. Being freelancer means we are independent of every obligation and we are our own boss. It’s a total freedom for our workplace and our work style.

In Broadway English freelance also has a fancy name such as Independent contractor which itself suggest as freedom of doing whatever work you want to do without taking anyone’s permission. But every freedom has a price to pay and sometimes a price is very huge. From that point, it is quite impossible to turn back the clock.

So before considering the freelancing job for yourself here are some points which have to be taken into consideration and the consequences of going HAN SOLO for future preferences coz it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

We can put this occupational hazards consequences into two different sets which are related to our professional and personal life.

A. Professional Related
Whilst choosing to freelance as your chosen profession you must consider these subsequent consequences develop while working.

1. No safety net to fall back:-
“Rome doesn’t build in one day” and businesses don’t return your investment quickly. They take time to set up. So you have to be financially very strong if you are thinking about going solo coz you have to support you when yourself in dire need of money. There won’t be any benefits and allowances, that you were availing as an employee to any firm. You have to bear all the expenses yourself.

Plus you have no peers to help you when got creatively stuck. No one to help you when your imagination doesn’t go beyond reach and your clients need more variation. So think before you leap.

2. Irregularity in your lifestyle:-
As you are king of your own kingdom you work as you please. There are no foundations of any kind which lead to flexible hours of work. Due to this kind of working hours you can develop irregularities which ultimately leads to many personal, medical and professional crisis.

3. Overlapping in personal and professional life:-
As you became a freelancer you can work from wherever you are whether you are at home or in café. The gap between your private life and your professional life overlaps each other. You can’t decide when you are in professional shoes and when in your shoes. It leads to many family crisis and increment in the bank balance of a family counsellor.

4. Always on a schedule:-
Due to the above-mentioned point, you never going to decide when you are in a break and when you are in a call. As a freelancer, you have to be available for your client 24*7 and the schedule becomes All work no play. It’s lead to many kinds of mental and health issues. You will find yourself struggling for some personal time, but you won’t get it. It’s all personal and it’s all professional.

5. No going back to yourself:-
Once you invest yourself fully to your freelancing business then there is no going back to old self. You have to fully concentrate on your work. You have to fully committed to it which results into no personal life. To become your own boss you have to sacrifice a great deal of your personal and financial worth. You are accountable to your work and clients. You must be working and developing someone’s dream, you can’t delay it or leave it in between.

6. Don’t like to be chained:-
Once you became your own boss you generate a tendency to work as your mind and time pleases and work from wherever you like. So it’s very difficult for anyone or even yourself to create a professional and regular schedule like an 9 to 5 employee has. You don’t like to be told how to do a work or when to do it. So create a very solitary environment for work. So you have to constantly reassure and explain them about your work. And a constant motivation to yourself as well that you need to keep going.

B. Personal related
As we see from above points that freelancing can cause much professional haphazard in anyone’s life, there is also some personal crisis which is generated this line of work.

1. Diverse yourself to every aspect:-
As you are the sole owner of our business you have to diversify yourself into every aspect of your business like PRO, caller, marketing etc. which divert you from your own work. This diversification causes you great trouble in delivering your projects on time and can also lower your quality. This will result in loss of trust between you and your client. It just a question of a minute client will sense it.

2. You have to be marketer, accountant and developer at the same time:-
To start your business one should market themselves, get your presence registered. To stay in business one should have to use marketing skill and to gain the niche from your competitor you have to market yourself. So ultimately it’s all about marketing. And in this cutting edge world, you have to be updated. This will put extra pressure on freelancers and their pockets. Sometimes it leads mental frustrations and rivalries.

3. Keep analyzing yourself and your worth:-
To stay in the market you have to constantly analyze yourself and stay up-to-date in your ideas, technology, process, logistics etc. For not getting exploited by a client and your fellow competitor you have to know yourself and your work’s worth. Otherwise, you cannot survive this cut throat world. It is a added headache of this freelancing business. Always on toes. As the time passes you become so detached with your work that you do it for the sake of income or become only duty bound. And that point only your mind would be involved in work, not the heart. It affects your creativity and production. So the profession which was chosen because you want to follow your heart, it left with brain and business only. This needs constant check and analysis.

4. Inconsistency in your income:-
One of the biggest problems in freelancing business is the uncertainty of income. It’s never predictable. Sometimes you can earn cash you can only imagine and sometimes it’s none. The success of your business depends on its cash flow. But in freelancing it is unpredictable. Sometimes you can get good business and sometimes you have to be dependent on your savings (if you have only).

5. Can’t be smug about your work:-
In order to sustain in your freelancing business, you can’t afford to be complacent about your work. You have to be grounded. You do have to listen to your clients very carefully and politely. You don’t let your success or your disappointment goes to your head. If you became smug about your work then your downfall started. You can only afford to be rigid and irrational with your thought and process if you want to lose your business. You may be thought that what you think is correct, what you do is correct and what you say is correct. In this process, you completely ignore the preferences of the clients which ultimately makes him/her seek other choices in the market.

6. Lacks of inspiration:-
As you are the sole driver of your freelancing car and no one there to guide you then you may face the problem of writer’s block or suffer from lack of inspiration. At some point you may go through with this kind of problem and coz there is no one to help you out, your business will suffer. Through perseverance is the key to success but due to lack of guidance, you just want to quit the show. After all the brainstorming and checking the do’s and don’ts list it’s clear that if you don’t possess strength and safety then don’t opt the freelancing business. It’s true that every business has its risk but if you just want to be your own boss and answerable to no one then it’s a very wrong profession for you. Which makes me question your motive and purpose to be a FREELANCER. Do want to be a good businessman or just want to explore this field. Think about it.

These are the eye-opening things that will help you in taking the better decision about being a freelancer.
Freedom is the word that people can do anything to pursue it in their life. And freelancing offers you this freedom in bulk. It gives you:

1. Freedom to choose your work style
You can work in night or day whatever time you would like too. You can work early in the morning along with coffee or may be in the night when there is no bug to disturb you. Isn’t it cool?

2. Freedom to choose your workplace
You can work from home or while travelling in the plane, may be sometime at the beach or may be in the mountains. This freedom is huge. The quote “If travelling is free, you won’t see me again” is true in that case. “If I can earn while travelling You won’t see me again”. I can do anything to have that life. My favourite workplace would be mountains.

3. You can choose your work
I can work on the ideas which I love to. Freelancing gives you the freedom to work on the work that you love to work upon. The freedom to choose the work of your type is huge. No repetitive work and no project manager to force you to work on the unwanted work.

4. You can be your own boss
Above all “You will be your own boss”. And believe me, I just imagine it. Freelancing allows being your boss, no need to apply for leave, no need to take permissions from project manager before going on a vacation with family and I can work according to me the comfort of time and place.

When so much is there in the bucket of freelancing, most importantly we can live the way we want along with good earning making a few sacrifices is worth. You just to need to disciplined with your work, accountable to your clients so that you will have more and more work. Freelancing gives you the freedom that others can only dream about. And if you put your heart in your work along with this freedom, that’s like icing on the cake. You will get more work may be from the same client again and again. Every client wants a team or freelancer that take the work responsibility and accountability. If you give these two things to him, he is not going anywhere.

Freelancing deserves all the above-mentioned discipline because the freedom it gives is priceless.